Heartbeat tests, in brief / WED 2-4-26 / Facing an imminent prospect (of) / Like some Quaker products / Pittsburgh-based industrial giant

Constructor: Hanh Huynh and Ted Mayer

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:21)

THEME: HELLO NEW MAN — "Seinfeld" catchphrase... or, when parsed as three words, how a participant of the theme entries might be greeted?

Theme answers:

• VISION QUEST for [Native American rite of passage]
• BAR MITZVAH for [Jewish rite of passage]
• RUMSPRINGA for [Amish rite of passage]

Word of the Day: STIFF (Like some upper lips and drinks) —

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, published in the United States on 22 March 1963 by Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and in the United Kingdom on 16 August 1963 by Herbert Jenkins, London. It is the ninth of eleven novels featuring Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves.

Chronicling Bertie Wooster's return to Sir Watkyn Bassett's home, Totleigh Towers, the story involves a black amber statuette, an Alpine hat, and a dispute between the engaged Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett concerning vegetarianism.

[I read a Jeeves book for the first time in December and haven't gotten over how hysterical it was. I've been trying to get some others from the library ever since. --Malaika]

• • •

Hello squad! Welcome to a Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while waiting for the train coming home from a performance of Ulysses. My fingers were freezing cold, and I still zoomed through. Had I solved this on a computer indoors, my time probably would have been closer to six minutes.

This was an excellent theme, and I am filing this one away to reference the next time I'm teaching someone how to make puzzles. Often, people begin by brainstorming lists of words that are related to each other. But publications nowadays tend to want an "extra layer of wordplay." It can be tough to illustrate what that means, but this puzzle does so beautifully. It starts out like a list theme: VISION QUEST, BAR MITZVAH, RUMSPRINGA. I wondered what the final entry in the list would be.... "quinceanera" maybe, or "First Communion"?

But then-- we get the extra layer. Not only does the fourth entry break the list theme and reveal what's going on, it does so using wordplay. It's not just, for example, "rite of passage" as an entry (a straight definition), it's a familiar phrase that gets re-interpreted both in terms of spelling (splitting "Newman" into "new man") and in terms of meaning (greeting a specific person vs. greeting a type of person). I'm an avid "Seinfeld" watcher and it took me a second, I think because I didn't clock that entry as a "catchphrase" specifically. (I'd call it a running gag?) But I am very familiar with it being said throughout the show... which I guess is what a catchphrase is haha.

VISION QUEST was new-ish as an entry to me. I've read The Kingmaker by Kennedy Ryan in which a Native American girl undergoes a rite of passage that I think must have been a VISION QUEST but I wasn't able to pull that phrase while I was solving. It came together easily enough though. 

This puzzle was easy, which to me means the entries were all clean and smooth. (Tough to do when the theme entries require multiple Us, multiple Vs, a Q, and a Z!) GIZMO, GIVE ME FIVE and BISCUIT were also fun to see. The toughest spot was in the bottom right, where EROICA / CATO / TROWEL / ALCOA tripped me up. (I had "alcoRa" crossing "troweR" for a bit.) 

CATO will always be the upsettingly hot villain from The Hunger Games to me....

Bullets:

• [Text initialism that's the name of a 2010 Usher hit] for OMG — I cannot believe this was 2010, omg
• [Girl encouraged to wake up, in a 1957 #1 Everly Brothers hit] for SUSIE — This took me a second as I am more familiar with the Simon & Garfunkel version
• [What might help someone be loud and clear?] for MIC — Very cute
• [Unforced ___ (athlete's concern)] for ERROR — I adore the term "unforced error" and use it all the time, rarely about sports tbh. My friends and coworkers and I are frolicking and stumbling about making dozens of unforced errors. You hate to see it.
• [Ruler's length?] for REIGN — Fantastic clue. Would have loved this on a Saturday with no question mark!

xoxo Malaika

P.S. Since I last posted, I have had a full-sized themeless puzzle published on Slate. Feel free to solve!

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Toy company behind Frisbees and Hula Hoops / TUE 2-3-26 / Burger chain with custard-based drinks / Exceptionally good, in Gen Z slang / The ___ Project (mental health organization for LGBTQ+ youth)

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: absurdly easy

[3D: Pair orbited by the fictional planet Tatooine]

THEME: INSIDE VOICES (62A: What children should use at the library ... and a literal description of the circled letters in this puzzle) — singers (i.e. "voices") can be found "inside" four answers (in circled squares):

Theme answers:

• TUNNEL VISION (18A: Narrow, focused perspective) (Elvis)
• WET PAINT (38A: Sign near a freshly applied coat) (T-Pain)
• SHAKE SHACK (12D: Burger chain with custard-based drinks) (Kesha)
• GRADE LEVEL (30D: Stage of education) (Adele)

Word of the Day: WHAM-O (16A: Toy company behind Frisbees and Hula Hoops) —

Wham-O Inc. is an American toy company based in Carson, California, United States. It is known for creating and marketing many popular toys for nearly 70 years, including the Hula hoop, Frisbee, Slip 'N Slide, Super Ball, Trac-Ball, Silly String, Hacky Sack, Wham-O Bird Ornithopter, and Boogie Board, many of which have become genericized trademarks. // In 1958, Wham-O, still a fledgling company, took the idea of Australian bamboo "exercise hoops", manufactured them in Marlex, and called their new product the Hula Hoop. The name had been used since the 18th century, but until then was not registered as a trademark. It became the biggest toy fad in modern history. 25 million were sold in four months, and in two years sales reached more than 100 million. "Hula Hoop mania" continued through the end of 1959, and netted Wham-O $45 million (equivalent to $485 million in 2024). // Shortly thereafter, the company had another huge success with the Frisbee. In 1955, inventor Fred Morrison began marketing a plastic flying disc called the Pluto Platter. He sold the design to Wham-O on January 23, 1957. By June they had learned that students back east were calling them a "Frisbee." In early 1958, Wham-O added the name "Frisbee" to the top of the Pluto Platter – and once again a Wham-O toy became a common part of life through the 1960s.

In the early 1960s, Wham-O created the Super Ball, a high-bouncing ball made of a hard elastomer Polybutadiene alloy, dubbed Zectron, with a 0.92 coefficient of restitution when bounced on hard surfaces. Around 20 million Super Balls were sold that decade, and the NFL named the Super Bowl games after it.(wikipedia)

• • •

A perfectly ordinary theme inside a childishly easy puzzle. I think I paused for the first and possibly only time when trying to parse "EYES ON ME" (39D: "Look this way, class") with very few letters in place, but the "Y" from YEAR eventually took care of that. Otherwise, it was read clue, write answer, as fast as my fingers could type. I don't time myself any more, the way I did when speed-solving mattered to me, but I know I was well under three minutes on this one, probably closer to two-and-a-half, which is lightning-fast for me on a Monday. On a Tuesday ... this might've been a record, which is especially stunning given that today's grid is over-sized (16 wide). The theme is somewhat interesting, but those "voices" are entirely arbitrary—why these voices? What do they have in common except being five letters long? Is there a roman numeral vision pun? "V"oices? Five-letter-long voices? Seems like I'm reading into things there, possibly, but this theme could really use something to enhance its general coherence. There are so (OH SO?) many singers you could hide inside longer answers that the "feat" here just didn't seem that impressive to me. CAMDEN YARDS. EPIC HERO. Even if you restrict yourself to mononymous singers, seems like there are lots of other options left on the table. 

As for the fill, like the theme, it is perfectly ordinary—not cringey or rough, rarely interesting either. The most original parts of the grid are the themers, two of which (GRADE LEVEL and SHAKE SHACK) are debuts. The revealer is also a debut, but in the plural, a slightly awkward one. I guess a teacher talking to a class might use the term in the plural. "Let's use our INSIDE VOICES!" But the singular seems like it would be infinitely more common than the plural. But back to the "children" part of that revealer clue—first of all, why "children"? Yes, it's a phrase you would use with a child, but everyone should use their INSIDE VOICES in the library (unless you're in a part of the library dedicated to cooperative or group activities). This is not a special rule for children. The clue got me thinking about how much of this puzzle seems to have been written with a grade-school class in mind. It's not just the puzzle telling kids to be quiet in the library. There's the teacher telling their (presumably grade-school) class, "EYES ON ME!" The term GRADE LEVEL keeps us in elementary school. Kids are playing musical chairs at one point (12A: Advanced to the next round of musical chairs, say (SAT)). Parents are barking nonsense at their kids (31A: Parent's curt response to a kid's "But why?" ("BECAUSE!")), probably because the kids aren't putting their WHAM-O toys away quickly enough. It's a weirdly grade-school-oriented puzzle. Appropriate, I guess, since it was grade-school easy. Ok, actual grade-schoolers would probably struggle with this puzzle ("Mommy, who's T-PAIN?"), but even novice solvers probably won't. Not much.

Notes:

• 53A: Beyond well done (BURNT) — this got me thinking "what the hell is the difference between 'burned' and 'BURNT'?" and it turns out merriam-webster dot com has some answers:

If you're describing things—that is, using the past participle of burn as an adjective—you very well may find that burnt sounds better to your ear. Burnt sugar and burnt toast, for example, are both significantly more common in published, edited text than burned sugar or burned toast are. (Burnt also features in the color names burnt umber and burnt sienna. // But if you're using the past tense of burn as a ho-hum verb, talking perhaps about the toast you've just overtoasted, burned is likely to be your choice. Unless you're a speaker of British English or have been binge-watching "Sherlock." In American English, burned is usually past tense. // Usual or not, though, both burnt and burned are acceptable forms. // There was a time, by the way, when brent was a legitimate past tense too. That form seems to have peaked in the 1500s, but if you want to throw it into conversation just for fun we won't criticize. (merriam-webster dot com) 

They're right about "brent," you know. Here's the opening of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1400):

SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye, 

Þe borȝ brittened and brent to brondeȝ and askez ... ("Since the siege and assault was ceased at Troy / The city destroyed and burned to brands and ashes ...")

• 70A: Feel remorse about (REGRET) — came at it from the back and before looking at the clue thought "EGRET!" then realized "nope, R-EGRET," which now has me thinking about a Republican Egret. (Sung to the tune of "American Woman" by the Guess Who): "Republican egret / Stay away from me! / Republican egret / Mama let me be!"

• 56A: Exceptionally good, in Gen Z slang (FIRE) — I've heard this a lot, but still paused slightly at "-IRE" thinking "... wait, do they say DIRE now?"

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. since the TREVOR Project is in the puzzle (51D: The ___. Project (mental health organization for LGBTQ+ youth)), I will once again plug the puzzle pack that has been produced in association with the upcoming ORCA Awards (the crossword equivalent of the Oscars). The (massive) pack of puzzles is available to anyone who donates to the TREVOR Project. Here are the deets. 

All funds raised support The Trevor Project, a suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ youth. Although suicide rates for LGBTQ+ youth are surging (39% seriously considered suicide in 2024), HHS terminated its contract for FY2026. // The puzzle pack includes 76 ORCA-nominated puzzles from 44 outlets plus five original puzzles from the Constructor of the Year nominees. (from crosswordfiend.com)

To donate to the TREVOR Project and get your puzzle pack, click here. And here's some more information on the ORCA Awards themselves:

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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